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The strategic reference points for the
global development initiatives are the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) and nearly all-developmental priorities in the region are
aligned to these goals. The major goal is to halve the proportion of
people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015 and the principal
strategy adopted increasingly by the development planners are the
poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs). Against this backdrop the
major goals of the regional development gateway will be:
Awareness Raising: Through the activities of
the SARDEG network, and in formulating, implementing and publicizing
the strategy and action plan, awareness will be raised amongst key
development stakeholders within the region as to the benefits and
challenges of development information sharing. It will be done
through:
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Frequent Seminars, Workshops, and
online discussions.
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Publication in the newspapers.
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Regular shows/programmes in the
electronic media .
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Publication of relevant materials
and distribution.
These activities will focus on the
constraints and opportunities of development initiatives in the
region, the requisite technological, human, cultural
infrastructures, and policy frameworks, understanding the roles of
various stakeholders, and the current development landscape within
the region with special reference to poverty reduction.
Connecting Good Governance and Development Goals:
As an information portal the regional development gateway will seek
to link good governance and development goals in the region. The
gateway will:
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Support the on-going national
efforts in institutional and administrative reform and
modernization through
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Serve to enhance public
administration and the delivery of public services by providing a
ready information outlet/window on the SARDEG portal.
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Help public and private institutions
to ICT-based medium to channel the processes of decision-making,
planning, co-ordination and management of their programmes. Eg,
monitoring foreign assistance flow to the NGOs in a state/country.
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Establish links between actors in
development initiatives at government, non-Government and
multilateral organizations and priorities of the regional as well
as national and regional economic, social and political goals.
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Disseminate local success stories in
development efforts and good governance and help scaling them up
in other parts of the region.
Coordination in
Policy and Project Implementation and Development: While the
countries in the region are at varied levels of ICT access and
usage, the regional gateway portal will set the scene for improved
co-ordination in South Asian regional developmental policy and
project implementation. Much of developmental project implementation
takes place at the national level and is not regional issues as
such. Towards knowledge sharing on these activities and possible
harmonization within the countries and possibly at the regional
level, the SARDEG portal will:
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Seek to build stakeholder consensus,
provide broad guidelines for the harmonization of national efforts
and identify opportunities for joint programming (e.g.
meteorological warning systems),
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Facilitate partnerships through
online networks between individual champions, organisations, and
institutions.
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Create opportunities for
collaboration and mechanisms for resource mobilization through
online networks and promotional events.
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Develop an action plan to be
formulated through a participatory process, involving
consultations with key-actors to strategize development
information sharing in the region.
Capacity Building &
Knowledge Sharing at Regional and National Levels: Through the
development of an effective regional network of policy and decision
makers, public administrators, the private sector and the
civil-society, SARDEG will:
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Share information and knowledge on
various developmental activities and strategies adopted by various
actors and lessons learnt thereof.
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Increase visibility of “best
practices” and fostering co-operation on developing common
policies and activities.
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Inform the stakeholders, various
government and non-government actors to build capacity in regional
resource and knowledge sharing.
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Organize events to build the
capacity of development planners and implementers in the region
with regard to the operational aspects of poverty reduction policy
and implementation of initiatives and programmes.
Development
Information Services: SARDEG will provide a forum for
community-based and local, regional or national organizations to
share and exchange ideas, experiences and resources on issues of
common interest. In doing so SARDEG will:
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Organise a regional workshop of
relevant institutions on development research and create an
institutional network for data collection in key areas:
infrastructure, sectoral applications (education, health, public
and private sector), and the information economy.
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Develop a suggested framework for
baseline studies with indicators.
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Disseminate the results of the
studies through the SARDEG portal in four components: Indicators
and Benchmarks, policy Issues, Human Resources and Applications.
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Create a platform for action
research by the development actors as well as institutional
researchers (eg, as interns, research associates with SARDEG).
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Will catalyse the development of new
e-based economic development tools by providing information on and
evaluations of various web applications and services, notably for
e-learning, e-governance, e-education, e-health, e-jobs,
e-communities and e-advisory services.
Financial
Sustainability: SARDEG aims to become financially sustainable by
the year 2009 through various income generation activities like:
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Subscription for web-based service
delivery (eg, Institutional admission, hospital appointments,
out-sourcing of various licensing and tendering processes of
smaller government departments who does not have dedicated ICT
facilities).
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ICT related training, and
consultancies.
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Creating a corpus fund through
international donors.
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